Nonequilibrium solidification in undercooled Ti45Al55 melts

Ti-Al alloys are of high technological interest as light-weight high-performance materials. When produced by solidification from the liquid state, the material properties of as-solidified materials are strongly dependent on the conditions governing the solidification process. Nonequilibrium solidification from the state of an undercooled liquid may result to the formation of metastable solid materials. On the one hand undercooling under special cases may influence the phase selection behavior during solidification, and on the other hand during rapid growth of solid phases in undercooled melts nonequilibrium effects such as solute trapping and disorder trapping may occur. In the present work containerless processing by electromagnetic levitation is used to undercool Ti45Al55 melts deeply below the liquidus temperature. The dendrite growth velocity during the solidification is measured as a function of undercooling by application of a high-speed video camera. In situ diffraction experiments at ESRF in Grenoble and microstructure investigations are performed in order to identify the primary solidified phases. The experimental findings are interpreted within current theoretical models for dendritic growth and solute trapping. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.